Flickr

Photo by: Rosana Prada

The site,  “The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling,” defines digital storytelling as, “the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories.” Through digital storytelling, teachers and students can add images, audio, and video to create a story about virtually everything. L2 Teachers can use digital storytelling to provide their students with the comprehensible input necessary for their students to understand particular concepts in any of the content areas. For example, ESL teachers can create a digital story as part of a social studies content lesson on the Civil War. By adding photographs of the Battle of Gettysburg and audio recordings of former slaves describing their lives, ESL teachers can use digital stories to bring the Civil War to life for their students. Due to the limitless number of possibilities that digital story telling brings to the L2 classroom, it is important that L2 instructors provide their students with specific criteria and explicit instructions regarding the creation of their stories.